


Memory Book

by mercurialMalcontent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 03:16:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurialMalcontent/pseuds/mercurialMalcontent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years on an asteroid makes for a lot of hanging out to do, and it's during one of these hang outs that Terezi discovers Dave's photo album. It takes a little convincing, but soon Dave is taking her on a trip down his particular Memory Lane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory Book

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VastDerp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp/gifts).



> Belated birthday present for VastDerp, who wanted Terezi and Dave being bros.

Tired from a long night of of decorating a room with chalk drawings and elaborate can constructions, you're now hanging upside down off of Dave's sleeping platform, tongue lolling out of your mouth to better taste the song he's putting together. He starts mixing in some some stringed instrument that makes you wrinkle your nose. "Don't use that sound! It has a stinky garlic twang that tastes disgusting against the smooth chocolate backdrop of the bass."

Dave snorts but doesn't deign to turn from his equipment. "Since when could you taste music?"

"Since always!" You flick your tongue out again and grimace. "No, not _more_ twang! Gross!"

"TZ, who's the musician here? It's me." He fiddles a little and oh god, more garlic assaults your senses, turning the bass chunky and foul.

You clap your hands over your ears. "Then stop being terrible!"

If he answers, you don't notice, because you're quite abruptly sliding off of the sleeping platform. You flail to get your arms under you and flip around. From the cluckbeast squawk Dave makes you suspect you missed kicking his shades off by mere inches!

"Damn TZ, if you're going to be in my room you've got to keep the circus act to yourself. No acrobatics around the equipment."

"Why thank you Dave, I'm just fine." You throw him a scowl of your shoulder, then burst into cackles as his dismay turns sharp and tangy. "You were worried!"

"Worried about my gear, yeah."

You turn to sit cross-legged. "Worried about me, dumbdumb. Don't lie, I can smell it." You laugh again as huffiness tinges his dismay. "I promise I'll try not to do any more acrobatic flips off of your sleeping platform, though."

"How about dissing on my music, can you promise not to do that?"

"Nope!"

A smile twitches his lips as he sits back down, amusement there and gone so fast you only catch a whiff. You grin back at him and lean back on your hands. One encounters the corner of something hard and angular and you flinch back in surprise. Hard and angular but _not_ sharp, which is a surprise in Dave's room. No, what sticks out from under the bed is a simple rectilinear shape that smells like dust and colors. _Memories._

You drag it out from under the bed – it's a book of some sort with thick, sturdy pages. It falls open in your lap and you give a page a good sniff. Yes, these are definitely memories, little pictures full of them. "Dave! I didn't know you had a memory book."

Dave shifts. "Memory book? Oh. Rummaging through my personal property again, huh? TZ, that's the problem with you, you don't respect a guy's secrets, you go fishing through his life to snag the juiciest for yourself and don't leave any for the poor hungry... uh..."

"I think that metaphor got away from you," you say distractedly as you sniff a page. Try as you might, though, you can't get a clear idea of what they are.

"Hey, give me a minute, I'll think of something."

You're not listening any longer. This page has foiled you, and now you're more curious than ever. Hm. Maybe if you just took a little taste...

"Hey hey hey WHOA there!" Dave snatches the book from your hands.

You hunch and make a face at him. "Wow, rude!"

"Says the chick who just tried to lick my photos." Despite his indignant words, he's radiating a fine, sharp dismay. It's different than the one you smelled when he thought you might have hurt yourself; less jagged, but laced with fear and loss. "Getting these things wet ruins them, TZ."

You slump and hang your head. "I was just trying to see them. I'm sorry."

Surprise overrides his dismay, the scent growing stronger when you don't cackle at him and take it back. Huh. This surprise is floral, for some reason. "Yeah, well. Let's put this away and we can forget anything ever happened."

"No, I still want to see them. You could describe them to me!" A burst of salty obstinacy comes from him, but you tilt your head and smile. "I want to know your memories so I can know you better."

"Like you don't have me picked apart like a Christmas turkey already."

"Hmph! I don't know what that is but it sounds rude." You cross your arms. "Dave! Come on. I introduced you to all of my scalemates."

"Yeah, well." Dave hesitates, the memory book drooping from his fingers. After a moment, he nudges you with his foot. "Back up on the bed, TZ. There's no room for me down there."

You clamber onto the sleeping platform and pat the rumpled blanket beside you invitingly. Dave flops down, barely giving you time to pull your hand away. He ignores the face you make at him as he opens the memory book. "I'm warning you right now that there's no good meat left on these bones. We're down to ligaments, those little greasy chunks that stick to them, and the gross bag of giblets someone forgot to take out before they cooked the thing in the first place."

You grin at him. "I love giblets!"

Dave's disbelief is flatter than a glass of water left out overnight. "You don't even know what giblets are."

"Sure I do. They're things... like... your LIVER!" You dart your fingers under his shirt. Dave yelps and tries to bat you away, but too late. Your fingers have found his ribs and are delivering unto them a righteous tickle attack!

Dave tries to curl away from you. "Ahaha goddammit TZ--" He _shrieks_ as you rake your nails over his belly. "Hahaha okay okay I'll show you _aah_ the stupid album--" You let up enough he can shove you off of him and give you a spicy glare from over the rims of his shades.

You just sit back and cackle. "Yes, show me your giblets, Dave!" You waggle your eyebrows and are rewarded with an even spicier blush.

"Sure, and maybe you can stop hitting on me for five seconds. It's hard for a man to concentrate when he has an alien girl leering at him and looking like she doesn't know if she's going to fillet him with her teeth or her elbows first."

"Psh. Teeth, of course."

Dave mock-cringes away from you. "No wonder Karkat thinks we're slobbing all over each other whenever we're out of his eyesight."

"Yes, because wishing to devour your giblets is definitely a sign I'm attracted to you."

"It sure sounds like a euphemism."

"Your giblets are too far away from your bulge for it to sound like a euphemism. Would you like me to demonstrate?" You gnash your teeth in his face.

Dave book-blocks you. "My giblets aren't going to help you see these photos any better."

"They will suffice if you don't show me your metaphorical giblets!" You make like you're going to chew on the book, but he snatches it away.

"That still sounds like a euphemism."

"And that still sounds like you're stalling."

Dave heaves a sigh. "Fine, fine." He opens to the first page. "Welcome to the Entirely Boring and Tedious Metaphorical Giblets of Dave Strider. Buckle up tight or you just might fall out of your seat when I bore you to sleep."

You lean over with excitement. "Less self-deprecation, more narration!"

Well, Dave gives you narration, of a sort. He carefully describes each picture in drawn out detail that comes out as dull to your nose as a box full of book dust. You have a vague idea of forms and figures existing in each picture, but nothing of the memories.

This will not do. You plant your hand on the page before Dave can turn it. "This is unsatisfactory. I've had better stories off of the back of a box of grubflakes!"

"Oh, come on, TZ."

"I mean it! You're telling me all the parts of the pictures but you're not showing me what they feel like. It's like trying to describe the majesty of a dragon by rattling off its major organs. It's not evocative, it's a grocery list."

"What, you expect me to act this shit out? Maybe emote or something?"

You grin. "Yes!"

Dave shakes his head ponderously. "No can do. Anything that'd break this poker face is strictly verboten. It'd be a capital crime against reality."

"That doesn't even make any sense." You poke a finger into his arm. "Besides, you were making lots of faces at Rose yesterday."

"Rose is a special case, a basket case--"

You wrinkle your nose. "What! Someone can't be both a basket and a case, they are two different things!"

Dave's shoulders slump. "TZ, come on, I was on a roll there."

"Rolling just like a square wheel," you agree, before screwing your face up in frustration. "Dave, must I resort to bribery? Is that the length to which you'll drive me just so I can get a taste of your metaphorical giblets?"

"Hmph." There's a puffy marshmallow pout to his whole countenance. "What could you possibly offer me that I might want, with my already supernatural levels of swag?"

"How about half an ounce of humility?"

"Nah, babe, I am so humble, you don't even know. I'm vastly understating my true levels of swag in calling them merely supernatural, so's to spare your ears from the wicked onslaught that would ensue if I were to describe my swag level to you in full."

He takes a breath and you insert into the empty space, "Dave, I don't care about your your swag level." His puffy marshmallow pout goes toasty. It's very cute, but completely ineffective in making you lay off him. "It's irrelevant! Besides, I already know your true weakness."

"Pff, ain't no such thing."

"Oh?" You lean forward. "How about how you had your hands all over _Mistress Limebelly_??"

"What? No."

"Yes! You clutched her to your chest the whole time we were cleaning up, it was adorable! You put her on the pile last in a wave of bittersweet reluctance." You sigh dreamily and clasp your hands under your chin. "It was very nearly romantic."

"Oh my god," Dave groans and slides his hands under his glasses to cover his eyes. "You're shipping me with a stupid plush dragon."

"She is not stupid," you huff. "And I am not shipping! I am merely offering a bribe of the scalemate you liked best in return for a little bit of emoting."

"Oh yeah, that makes it sound a _lot_ better." Nonetheless, Dave goes still and thoughtful in a way that smells like apple pies. You don't know how such delicious smelling thoughts could possibly be obstinant, but this is Dave. You ready your best arguments in favor of him taking the offer, just in case. However, he surprises you by asking, "You're not going to tell anyone, right?"

You tilt your head in puzzlement. "No! I would not want anyone to know I had to stoop to bribes."

"Ha!" His grin is there and gone, giving you another whiff of amusement. "Yeah, okay, I guess I'll try some of this 'emoting' bullshit, then."

Dave resettles the book on his lap and starts over again. "Okay, so, there's this street, and it's dark, and raining, and there are cars flashing by. And, like, the street is black as fucking anything but it's glossy with the rain, and that rain is just _needling_ down, it's cold as shit..."

He sounds like he did the first time around, but this time he's _trying_ , emotion rippling through his voice, and that alone evokes more than any number of dry, tasteless technical descriptions would. The effort works its own magic on him, too; the more he describes, the more he gets into it, his own emotions making a feedback loop that soon has him gesturing, acting out the scenes with his hands and fingers.

"This one's a playground – uh, that's a place where there are things like slides and swings and shit--"

You blink at Dave in confusion. "Swings? Like from nooses?"

He cringes away from you. "No! No no, haha, fuck--"

"Just messing with you!" You ruffle his hair and he squawks. "I know what swings are."

Dave snorts and fixes his hair. "You are a grade-A butt, TZ."

"Only the best for you, Dave! Now, keep going."

"Any-fucking-way, it's a playground, but from, like, an angle, because I took this from the top of a tree. It's sunny, but way late in the afternoon so the shadows of all the kids and equipment and shit are like, these super-attenuated dark reflections of everything that's happening, and they're falling so thick that from this angle it's like, the people are being pulled around by their shadows and not the other way around..."

You can imagine it clearly enough to taste, for all you don't have much familiarity with the looks of the times of day when the sun is up. It's a surreal scene, all shadowy figures that taste of cold moving through the sweet golden honey of the fading sunshine, and so distant that it's only a ghost of flavor carried in the metallic-sweet taste of loneliness.

That flavor is a near constant in Dave's photos. Everything he observed through his camera lens is at a remove, as if it existed in a different world from himself. People, most animals, even products on store shelves come through to your senses as things near enough to touch, but too distant for your fingers to ever get there.

Even his self-portraits are tinged with that sense of unreality. These he acts out directly, slouching against the doorframe or making ridiculous faces and postures, and while you laugh, you can't help but hurt at the same time. You wonder, as Dave paints another word-picture with enthusiasm even he can't hide, if he knows how lonely he was. Do fish know that the water they swim in is wet?

You keep those thoughts to yourself and file them away for a later date and a proper pile. Outwardly, you laugh at Dave's latest pose and give his outthrust ass a smack. "You are an invitation to impropriety, Mr. Strider!"

"Ooh Ms. Pyrope, ooh," Dave deadpans and waggles his posterior at you. "Do I need to fear for my virture?"

"What virtue?" you ask brightly as you slap his ass rather harder than you slapped it before.

"Ow, fuck!" Dave removes his butt from your reach. "Don't bruise the goods if you ain't buying."

You rub your chin thoughtfully. "How much do you cost?"

He flops down beside you and snags the memory book out of your lap. "Too much for the likes of you, you butt-slapping monster."

"Aww!" You give Dave the best pout you have. All it earns you is an affronted look that so reminds you of a put upon mewbeast that you burst into giggles.

"You gonna pipe down, or am I going to have to cut this show short?" Dave arches a brow. You smell his shiny apple amusement right through his thin veneer of sour affrontery and it only makes you giggle harder. You clap both hands over your mouth and contrive to look contrite, and the sight of you makes him burst into giggles in return.

Dave Strider giggling is so incredibly cute you could cover his face in little pale kisses, but you suspect that would end memory book time quite suddenly! _Save it for the pile_ , you tell yourself sternly, even though it makes your bloodpusher crumple a little bit.

Your sudden melancholy and his sudden embarrassment at giggling render you both silent. You clear your throat before it ccan get awkward and Dave shifts the book a little. "Okay, now that the peanut gallery has settled down--"

"Peanut!" You huff. "I don't want to be a peanut. Why can't it be a mixed fruit gallery?"

"Because that wouldn't make any _sense_." You gape at Dave in bafflement, but rather than explain he uses your silence as an opening to introduce the next picture. "Prepare for your tiny troll mind to be blown," he says grandly, "because the image I'm showing -- uh, emoting -- right now is one of a genuine little old human lady."

"Dave, I hate to ruin your fun--"

"Since when?"

"--but I _know_ what old people look like."

"You know what old _trolls_ look like, but I bet there isn't a kindly old granny among them. Let me enlighten you."

Enlightenment, it turns out, smells like a pharmacy, old flowers, and lots and lots of food. Apparently baked goods are the traditional thing with granny-figures, but Dave also tells you of cheesy noodles and something called gumbo that sounds so delicious, you have to cling to the sleeping platform to keep yourself from running off to alchemize some right that instant. You also have to admit that troll society was indeed bereft of old people of that sort, and more's the pity.

You also smell much less loneliness in the way Dave took her photos. You aren't surprised that he lingers over them, and you aren't surprised when he abruptly changes the subject to his other hivestem neighbors. You don't need to ask; you know grief when you smell it.

But you don't have to pretend to be interested in order to help Dave save face -- his neighbors are all just as strange to you as the old lady is. One woman is lusus to three little wigglers and smells of exhaustion and steel -- small wonder! You cannot imagine being lusus to even one wiggler, much less a trio of them. There's a two adults and their wigglers -- Dave calls that a 'family' -- that all wear smiles but smell of tense desperation and unwashed clothes. There's a grown man who smells of books, gunpowder, and danger, his photo taken from a distance.

There are so many, such a dizzying array of scents and emotions, you begin to wonder if Dave took a photo of each and every resident of his hivestem. It's almost too much for you to process, so when Dave stops entirely and goes still beside you, you don't notice for three full heartbeats.

"... Dave?" You lean your shoulder into his and run a finger over the edge of the book. There are still pages left, lots of them, but you ask anyway, "Was that the last of them?"

Dave's stillness turns to tension, his arms trembling like he's about to slam the book shut. A few heartbeats later, he lets out a long breath. "N-no. No." He swallows hard. "There are still pictures of my bro."

You try not to tense up, yourself. Dave hasn't so much as breathed a word about his man-lusus since he and Rose joined the asteroid, and you haven't pestered him for stories. To do so would be too nosy even for you, considering how terrible your conversations with Dave ended up after Dave found his brother's body.

All the same, you find your curiosity piqued, not in the least by the tendrils of bitter pea soup grief you smell wafting from Dave. He needs to talk about it, you know that as clear and certain as you know your own name, but you can't mess this up! Maybe you have more leeway now, but maybe you don't, maybe if you mess this up there will never be pale kisses in a pile of scalemate plushes.

You lean your shoulder into Dave's a little more and brush his knuckles with yours, trusting your body to say _I'm here, and I'm listening_ better than your mouth can. Dave tenses again and goes so still you're not even sure he's breathing, those tendrils of grief turning into an electric tangle of emotions.

Worry rakes its little claws all over your insides. You might have to risk moving too fast and shooshpap him if he can't calm down. The thought makes you queasy. You've never shooshpapped anyone before. What if you get it wrong, what if you try it and and you knock his glasses off or clobber him in the ear?

You've nearly worked yourself into a knot about it by the time Dave sighs, that emotional tangle smoothing out into plain grief shot through with resignation. He bumps his knuckles against yours. "I guess you want to hear all about this weirdo and his puppet fetish, huh?"

You're so relieved you could cry. You blink it back and give Dave your best grin. "Yes!"

Dave chuckles wanly and shakes his head. "TZ, sometimes I just don't know about you."

"You know I like weirdos." You poke him in the ribs and smirk.

He huffs and pokes back. "Takes one to know one."

You mime snapping at his finger and laugh. "Of course! So let me find out how weird your bro-lusus really was."

"Yeah. Yeah." Dave sits still a moment, his head bowed over the memory book. He swallows hard before he begins, "So these first pictures are all, uh. Just blurs. The guy was so fucking fast, it was unreal, the times I could get a picture of him when he didn't want one taken were pretty much never. Seriously, I don't know how a guy who I couldn't get a picture of on my fastest shutter speed couldn't be fast enough to o-out-strife a fucking _chess piece_ \--"

Dave gulps and shudders, hot grief rolling off of him in smothering waves. You hesitate, even though you know what you have to do. He gulps again, a strangled noise that you never, ever want to hear out of him again, and it's that feeling that finally makes you able to lift your hand and pat his shoulder.

He goes so tense and still that for a horrible moment you wonder if your Seeing has failed you. You refuse to give up, however, not unless he pushes you away, not unless he _runs_ away. You're nearly shaking as you move your hand to the middle of his back and shift your patting into rubbing. "Shhhh," you whisper. "Shoosh. Shoooosh."

Dave makes a choked sound and slumps. "F-fuck." He slips his fingers under his glasses and rubs at his eyes. "You sure you still want me to tell you about t-this asshole?"

It's his way of asking for a way out of doing this and facing his grief. It's also his way of asking you to stop him from avoiding it. "Yes," you say, and you rub his back more firmly. _I'm here, and I'm listening_.

"I should have known." It comes out a grumble, but Dave doesn't shrug you off. You rub until he straightens and takes a deep breath. "Alright, making this happen: The Photographic Chronicles of My Douchebag Dead Bro, page one."

Dave speaks in a monotone as he describes the pictures, but you can smell the anger, grief, and confusion that seethes underneath. He demonstrates the pictures with sharp gestures that ask with every movement, _If you were so amazing, why did you die?_

As Dave flips the page he says,"These are Bro practicing his sweet moves." The derision in his tone is just a thin candy shell over his continued confused grief. "I can demonstrate these personally, but your imagination has to provide a sword that isn't a broken piece of shit." He pushes the memory book onto your lap before he stands and pops a sword out of his sylladex – not Caledfwlch, but a much slimmer, flimsier, but equally broken blade.

"I tried to be a ninja and take these on the sly, which of fucking course didn't work," Dave says as he moves into a starting pose. "That asshole could notice a black cat in a coal mine at _midnight_ \--" The last word comes out broken, and he has to pause to compose himself. "But after he noticed me on the air conditioner and beaned me with a smuppet, he ever so graciously let me stay on the roof taking pictures and getting a sunburn."

He keeps talking as he flows through the moves in slow motion. "So, like, it was a boiling hot day, sun so bright it was the visual equivalent of a scream and made the city smell like Satan's unwashed asshole--"

You make a face. "I don't know which sounds more appalling!"

"Haha, yeah, you guys don't do sunlight, right?"

You lower your glasses and point to your eyes. "Durrrrr."

"Oh shit. Sorry, TZ, I didn't--"

"Mean to stop telling the story?" you say, gesturing pointedly at the photo book.

"Pfft, yeah." Dave shakes his head. "So as I was saying..."

He paints the scene around you with words and motions and the feelings rolling off of him. You feel the heat that squeezes you from above and below, you smell concrete and sweat even more than you do the whiffs of exhaust and garbage. You feel the phantom breeze of a man whipping around with amazing speed, and you smell the shape of him – all incredible whipcord strength, impossibly graceful, at least ten feet tall and built like a god, throwing a shadow so large it extended everywhere Dave stepped.

If you hadn't gotten a good sniff of Dave's man-lusus when you'd scrolled through his wigglerhood on Trollian, you'd be wondering if his Bro really was a god amongst humans.

"Of course it was too good to last." Sourbitterangry _Why did you die?_ mixes up with sourbitteramused _Fuck, what an asshole._ "I was lulled into a false sense of security behind my camera, so then he fucking – he fucking says 'Time to strife, little man' _just_ as he charges at me, right, and I don't even have my camera down, I'm right in the middle of taking a shot, and he flips the camera up with the tip of his sword, so this last picture is just an arc of sky and birds."

"And you?"

"Me, ha, he knocked me ass over heels and I rolled halfway across the roof. Came up with my sword and half a second away from--" Dave swallows and shakes his head. "He'd caught my camera as it fell. The moment I was up he waved it at me and captchalogued it, the bastard, just to make it hurt more when he kicked my ass." He laughs hoarsely, a sweet and sour smile crossing his lips. "Typical Bro."

You laugh along with him. "He sounds like he was quite the handful! Was he able to keep himself amused between strifes, or did you have to do other things to pacify him?"

Dave deadpans at you so hard you think he hit upon the platonic ideal of deadpanning."TZ, that's not how humans work."

"Then show me how they work, Professor Strider," you say with a smirk as you offer the memory book to him.

He can't resist that. Dave takes the book from you and sits back down. "I don't know if I'm gonna show you much about how _humans_ work, but you're gonna get a big noseful of my Bro."

Dave takes you on an epic journey through his photographic memories of his man-lusus, demonstrating to you the wide variety of puppets the adult regularly ambushed Dave with. The assorted ridiculous humanoid marionettes that dangled around their hive puzzle you – surely if anyone sensible were to dangle effigies everywhere, they'd go for a noose. But no, Dave explains that they dangled how they did because that allowed his bro would to make them dance to his raps. Dave demonstrates one of these to you until you demand that he stop.

One page passes at exceptional speed, and it's no wonder – the photos are of Dave's bro with his disturbing glassy-eyed puppet creature that reminds you all too well of that hideous menthol-and-mold smelling thing Gamzee was dragging around before he went into hiding. You are both satisfied to let those pass without too much comment.

Then there are the large assortment of artificially fruit flavored puppets with disturbing anatomical features. You nearly choke on held-back laughter at Dave's attempts to describe them without really describing them. Despite his best efforts, you get the gist anyway, and can't resist announcing it. "I understand – they're sexually suggestive, with the nose meant to represent a human bulge!" You grin widely. "Is that why they disturb you so much, Dave?"

"They don't fucking disturb me, they're just hideous," he retorts.

He can't fool you, though; you smell the smoke of mortification rising off of him. "Then you wouldn't mind giving me one?"

"What? No! Why would I even have one of those things. Why would you _want_ one."

"I liked the smell of them!"

"You have to be fucking kidding me."

"I am not! They are colorful and hilariously lewd and I want one!"

"No you don't."

"Yes, I do! It could live with my scalemates--"

" _Hell_ no."

"– and I could bother Karkat with it!" You wait a beat for his silence to become speculative, and continue, "He has such a _plush rump_ , I'm sure I could put a smuppet to good use." You give Dave your best brow waggle.

The smoke of Dave's blush flashes into a full-out forest fire! You burst into laughter and fall back onto the sleeping platform from the force of it. "Yeah, I'll give you something to laugh about," he snaps. This just makes you laugh harder, so hard that you only notice he's flashstepped over when he shoves his hands up your shirt.

The scolding you'd intended comes out a shriek of indignation as he gives you the same tickle punishment as you meted out to him earlier. It turns out his blunt fingers are very cold and just as good at finding every ticklish spot on you as yours were on him! You cackle and flail with knees and elbows, but Dave is just too fast.

"How's _this_ for righteousness, troll girl??"

You wail with laughter and try to block his hands, but that just leaves different bits of you exposed which he immediately attacks. "The c-court begs Your Honor f-for mercy!"

"Thought--" Dave gasps through his own silent laughter. "Thought trolls didn't d-do mercy?"

You make the most embarrassing squeal as he drags his fingernails down your sides. "Human mercy! H-human mercy!"

Dave draws back and you curl into a ball of wheezing, overstimulated delight. Tears are running from your eyes and staining his platform linens with salty teal smears of joy. You realize that if Karkat sees those he will be even more convinced you're pailing Dave, and that just makes you burst into giggles all over again.

"Yo, you okay there?" Dave peers over, mock-concern like shellac over a seed of the real thing. "Shit, I didn't break you, did I?"

"I-I should say yes so you'd have to explain it to Karkat." You snigger at the scent of his expression and push yourself upright. "I'm fine, dumbass."

"That's a pity, because that means you're going to want me to show you the rest of these photos, huh."

"I can smell the smile on your face, Dave," you say sweetly.

"Fuck," he says, and it comes out halfway a laugh. "Okay, settle back down spaztastic, and let's re-rail this train. Choo choo, all aboard for Weird Dudeville."

"Population: Us!"

"Speak for yourself," Dave grumbles as he flips the page.

After the puppets, you expect something truly bizarre. However, the funny thing about these next pages is that they really aren't weird at all – or at least, not any weirder than what you've seen the humans consider normal human stuff to do!

But you aren't disappointed, because despite how Dave's words insinuate that he thinks his man-lusus was nigh-on incomprehensible, his tone and gestures suggest softer emotions. As he describes his bro sewing puppet clothes and playing video games, you recognize the smell: the faded, familiar yet impossible to pinpoint scent of nostalgia.

That poignant scent grows stronger as Dave continues, painting you word pictures of a man much nearer to human fragility than the god-creature with a sword he described earlier. This is a man doing his awkward best to raise a child he wasn't entirely sure what to do with. There's photos of him preparing food in their weapon-strewn nutrition block, of him washing their supposedly 'ironic' scuttlebuggy (it looks like a couple of boxes on wheels, with wood paneling), and of him playing some sort of game of targeting skill in some place Dave describes as so bright and colorful it makes you sneeze.

And then Dave turns a page and there's another long pause, but this smells of wistful sadness instead of tension and confused grief. He says, finally, "He let me snap some pictures of him at his turntables, too." He runs his fingers over the edges of the book. "He probably didn't look a whole lot different than I do at mine, just imagine a douche in a stupid hat and stupider shades."

He sounds so heartbroken you have to blink back tears. You manage to keep your voice even as you ask, "Did his music sound the same, too?"

"Haha, no, hell no. He taught me everything he knew but my style diverged a year or two ago. And he was still way the fuck better, but. You know. Virtue of being of being like two decades older."

"How much is that in real time?"

Dave hisses an exasperated sigh. "Oh, like I fucking know." He rakes his fingers through his hair. "9 sweeps and change or some damned thing."

You bite back your smile as he continues, "He kept a lot of jungle and hip-hop influences in his stuff, mixed in some reggae." Dave lowers his head. "Heh, he always kind of looked at me funny for my chiptunes shit, and I guess it was pretty weird that I was the one breaking out the 8-bit retro goodness when I wouldn't even play a game more than five years old."

Dave may as well be speaking human Greek for all you know what he's talking about, but you know it's good for him to say it. What's not good, though, is his assumption his bro would hold him in contempt. "Maybe he was admiring you for doing your own thing, Dave."

"Nah, he even told me I was a little weirdo for it."

"I would think coming from him that'd be a compliment!"

"I dunno, TZ." He shakes his head, and you smell a gentle sort of confusion in it. "Maybe I ought to play some of his shit for you, describing it isn't going to do it any justice."

"I'm all about justice!" You chance a shoulder squeeze and you catch a flicker of a smile from him.

"Don't I know it. Okay, let me queue up some tunes."

It only takes Dave a moment to get a playlist started; you suspect he'd already had one for some time. That done, he sits beside you again, and as the music starts he's quiet and still.

The songs are indeed different than those Dave creates, but familiar in an unfamiliar way, much like you suspect you would find in their faces if you could. Dave's bro's songs take darker and heavier turns where Dave chooses sharp and fiery ones, chooses smoothness where Dave chooses stutters, hammers where Dave goes light.

It's different, and it's good, but what difference in skill you're able to discern is in complexity, not in maturity of choices or overall effect.

There's a rustle after the last song, so alien to the room you're paranoid for a second. "Oh, right," Dave says, quiet as can be. "This..." There's a cough from the computer speakers. "He made this for my thirteenth birthday. Six sweeps in bullshit troll time."

Dave isn't even teasing you with those words, he's just going on like he does when he's nervous, and he sounds like he'd keep going but a voice from the speakers interrupts him. "Hey, little man. Thirteen, huh? Fuck, you're practically an adult now."

The voice has that same kind of familiarity in an unfamiliar way as the music. It's older than Dave's, deeper, and gives you a sudden flash of insight into how Dave is going to sound in three sweeps, six, ten if you live that long. But the inflection is different in a way that reminds you oddly of Rose, it's rougher in some places and sharper in others, and overall is not nearly as emotionlessly Deadpan Master of Irony as Dave has lead you to believe.

"Seems like it wasn't that long ago that I found myself saddled with your tiny ass and thought to myself, 'What the hell am I gonna do with a baby.' Well, what I hope I did was raise him up at least halfway right enough for him to deal with all the shit the universe is going to throw at him."

Dave makes a choked sound that was trying to be a laugh and failed. "Happy birthday, Dave," he mouths along with the voice, and his face crumples briefly.

Propriety be damned, you wrap an arm around Dave. He stiffens, but as the music starts you feel him make himself relax and lean against you. "This song is really embarrassing, I'm warning you in advance," he mumbles into your hair. "Happy birthday, have some ironic bullshit."

You find out why in a second. Dave's bro made a rap for him. The music under his voice sounds more like Dave's stuff, and the lyrics are of the kind humans sing to their wigglers, sweet things about pride and courage and everything working out okay.

About a quarter of the way through the song, Dave gets his arm around you; by halfway through, he's clinging. As the song winds down, you're sure you know why Dave claims his bro chose the lyrics ironically. You're equally sure that he didn't mean them ironically at all.

You sit clinging to one another in silence as the music fades to nothing. You wait for Dave to pull away, or to tell you to. You wait, and wait, and wait, and other than what you suspect was a sniffle, he doesn't so much as make a peep. You decide to try your luck. "Hey, Dave?"

"Y...yeah?"

"Do you want to go get Mistress Limebelly now?"

"Yeah. Sure." He pulls away now, and you let him, and try to pretend you don't notice his rubbing his eyes under his glasses. "Need to get out of here for a while anyway."

"Yes!" You spring to your feet and offer him your hand. "We've been sitting around for too long."

Dave looks at your hand suspiciously. "What's this 'we'? You were lounging around on my bed while I danced and capered for your unrefined amusement, as I recall."

"As it should be." You wiggle your fingers and look expectantly in his direction.

"Unfair, TZ. Unfair and uncool." He finally takes your hand and allows you to haul him to his feet. "I can't be the only one providing amusement around here. You gotta keep the scales balanced, girl."

You sniff at him suspiciously as he moves past you. "The scalemate isn't enough?"

Dave holds the door open for you. "Nope."

"Hmmm, I suspect blackmail." You stroke your chin thoughtfully as you move into the hallway.

"You suspect wrong. A guardian for a guardian, TZ. I told you about my Bro, so you tell me how the hell you ended up with an egg for a lusus," he says as he falls into step beside you.

You grin at him in delight. "I accept your terms!" Your bloodpusher sings; it looks like you're going to get that paledate in the scalemate pile after all.


End file.
